


leather and metal

by peterparkr



Series: Febuwhump 2020 [7]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Gen, Panic Attacks, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Whump, febuwhump 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22757593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterparkr/pseuds/peterparkr
Summary: “Mr. Stark!” The voice is far too cheery—and loud.Tony winces as he wiggles into a sitting position. Every movement makes it feel like his brain is bouncing around in his skull, uncomfortable thuds when it hits the edges.“Don’t worry, I’ve got this under control,” Peter says.ORTony and Peter get captured and Tony doesn't love being trapped underground.Febuwhump Day 7: Leather Bound Wrists
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Febuwhump 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1620064
Comments: 4
Kudos: 182





	leather and metal

**Author's Note:**

> Two weeks in and I have finally completed a week of Febuwhump! A prompt per day is hard...and titles are 80% of the problem. Next time I will use the prompt names lol

Tony groans and shifts. He tries to bring his hands up to his face to rub at his eyes, but finds that he can’t move them—there’s something holding them behind his back, digging into his wrists.

His eyelids feel too heavy, sort of stuck together. He forces them open, immediately feeling the swirling disorientation of waking up in a place he knows he didn’t fall asleep.

It’s dim, but not pitch black. Everything he can see is stone or metal. 

“What the fuck,” he whispers.

“Mr. Stark!” The voice is far too cheery—and loud.

Tony winces as he wiggles into a sitting position. Every movement makes it feel like his brain is bouncing around in his skull, uncomfortable thuds when it hits the edges.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got this under control,” Peter says.

If he squints, Tony can see him. They’re separated by a stone wall, but there’s a small rectangular window three quarters of the way up, with bars across it.

That’s when Tony realizes what he should have the moment he noticed his wrists were bound together. They’re trapped—caged up as if they’re prisoners. They probably are, but to whom, Tony doesn’t know. It doesn’t really matter. They’re captive no matter who is keeping them this way.

Tony fidgets, he needs to do _something_. He’ll go insane sitting here. The walls are already closer than they were a moment before—narrowing in on him. He automatically tenses against his restraints before he remembers that his hands are out of commission at the moment. He starts tapping his foot instead.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter’s holding two of the bars on the window, little pieces of leather circling each wrist, frayed strands dangling down his arms. He’s peering through the gaps at Tony. There’s a jagged cut across the left half of his forehead, dried blood crusted down the side of his cheek underneath it, but besides that he looks relatively unscathed.

“Didn’t you say you were controlling the situation,” Tony snaps, voice sharp. Sharp is better than shaky.

Peter nods. He looks more pleased at the prospect of Tony giving him the lead than deterred by his tone.

“I’m going to bust down my door first, then I’ll come do yours,” he says. 

He disappears from the window. Tony lets his head fall down to his knees and breathes in, then feels the hot puff of air as he exhales against his thighs. The doors are no match for Peter’s strength. They’ll be out in no time. Everything will be fine.

There’s a long hissing buzz, followed by a thump. 

Tony lifts his head. “Peter?”

“Ugh,” his voice sounds strained. “Careful, the doors will zap you.”

They’re really trapped, then. The thought causes an uncomfortable twinge in Tony’s chest. The feeling settles in his blood, like he was the one who got electrocuted instead of Peter. The air in the room is thinning as the walls get closer.

“What do we do now? Do we just wait?” 

Tony lets his head fall back down, but he feels no calmer in the little safe-haven between his thighs and chest. He’s still suffocating. 

“How long do you think it’ll be before one of the Avengers finds us?”

The breath that Tony had been trying to draw cuts off into a strangled wheeze. He strains against the leather, to no avail.

It could be months. It could feel like years. He’s been there before.

“Who do you think got us? Do you remember what happened?”

Tony’s brain feels almost barren, just a few stray, panicked thoughts bouncing around in the empty space. He should be using the few that are left to come up with a plan, but he can’t quite pin any of them down. They slip out of his grasp, then continue along, zipping and then stuttering as they ping around, each laced with the same frantic energy.

“I wonder where we are right now.”

Tony grinds his teeth together. “Peter—”

“Do you think we’re still in New York?”

“Stop asking questions.”

“Oh, okay. What do you want to talk about?”

Tony bumps his head against his knees a few times. “Still a question, Peter.”

“That counts? I thought you meant, like, big questions about how we got captured and ended up in these creepy jail cells.”

“I said st—you—” Tony trails off into anguished gibberish. 

His arms flail and twist behind his back as he struggles to his feet. He half-jogs, half-stumbles toward the door, tripping a few inches from it. His knees hit the floor with a clack that reverberates up into his hips. He folds in half, a twisted variation of a child’s pose.

They’re never going to get out of here. These cells are deep underground—just like the cave had been—Tony can feel it. There’s the same type of stale air down here. Nobody’s going to find them because they’re too far off the grid. This time, there are no tools around to get him out. Even if there were, Tony doesn’t know if he could do that again. The first time was a miracle, and he doesn’t have Yinsen to protect him anymore—he’ll have to protect Peter from—

There’s a series of harsh creaks like metal bending. He hears a voice, but it’s far away and fuzzy, like whoever is speaking is doing so through thick wool.

Something touches his back and he jolts upward. The back of his head connects with something hard and his brain hits his skull with an accompanying flash of pain. He can already feel a bump starting to form under the skin, but he’ll worry about that later. The most important thing is that he needs to get away.

He awkwardly scuffles back a few feet. It’s not until his shoulder blades are pressed against the wall that he sees Peter.

He’s holding his chin gingerly and his eyebrows are drawn together. Tony glances around the cell. It’s just as desolate as before, besides the addition of Peter. The only difference is that the bars on the window are bent to form a gap just big enough for a teenage boy to squeeze through.

“Mr. Stark, it’s just me—er, Peter. Can you hear me?”

Tony sighs. He tries to bring his hands up to his chest to rest near his rapidly beating heart, but they’re still stuck in place.

He holds them out to his side as far as they’ll go. “Can you get these off of me?”

Peter nods quickly and scrambles over, snapping the restraints easily so that his wrists are just like Peter’s—two unconnected leather shackles circling each one. Tony scratches at them. They still feel too restrictive.

“All the way.” Tony shakes his arms a little bit, before adding a belated, “please.”

Peter complies immediately, tugging at the material and then discarding it to the side.

Tony rubs at his wrists until they start to feel like his own again. He leans his head back onto the wall and closes his eyes. He starts breathing and counting.

“Are you okay?”

He exhales, counting to eight. “Yup.”

“Are you sure? I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine.”

There’s a long silence. Tony props his eyes back open. Peter’s kneeling a few feet away, fingers worrying over one of the strands of leather. He looks smaller than usual—and scared, too. That’s the last thing Tony wants.

“Come on.” Tony pats the space next to him. “Let’s get some of that blood off of you.”

Peter hesitates, but then scoots over until his back is against the wall. Tony leans over and rubs at the line of dried blood until pieces start to flake off. He stops before he gets too close to the actual cut.

Peter keeps the leather in his hands. He pinches the end then scoots it upward, pinching the next bit, repeats the motion until there’s no more leather left, then he starts over in the opposite direction.

“Are we—” He clamps his mouth shut, looking at Tony nervously.

“Go ahead,” Tony prompts.

Peter shakes his head, starts another round on the leather.

“Peter, come on. I’m asking you to ask me—that means I can take it.”

“I don’t want to freak you out again.”

“I’m okay.”

Well, more okay than he was. It helps that Peter’s here—not just a face in the window or a disembodied voice, but a real, scared boy that it’s Tony’s job to look after and make sure gets through this in one piece, both physically and mentally.

“Are we—we’re going to get out of here, right?” Peter’s voice pitches up a few notches with panic at the end. 

Tony closes his eyes, hauls in another shaky breath.

“Yes,” he decides. “You know what? Let’s do it now.”

“I don’t really want to get electrocuted again, Mr. Stark.”

“An understandable choice.”

Tony rises to his feet, using the wall to steady himself and trying to ignore the way his knees shake and threaten to buckle. He walks the the perimeter of the cell, analyzing the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Peter drifts behind him like a shadow.

“What about your side? Any vents?”

“I’ll check.”

Peter crawls up the wall and through the window. He returns soon after, with a dejected shake of his head.

“Alright.” Tony glances around the room once more. “How do you feel about getting electrocuted one more time, if I promise it gets us out of here? Either that or you can lift me up and I’ll do it.”

“What? No! I'm the one with super-strength.”

“Didn’t sound like it helped much last time.”

“But, I’m alive! You have a heart condition.”

“Don’t say it like that. Makes me sound like an elderly man.”

“You always say it like that.”

“It’s charming when I do. When you do, it's elder abuse.”

“Not funny, Mr. Stark. That’s a real problem.”

Tony shakes his head. If he doesn't put a stop to it, this could go on for days. “Whatever you say, kid. Just climb up the wall, break off one of those bars.”

Peter’s eyes light up and he jumps up to the window, yanking out one of the bars with an ease that never fails to astound Tony.

“We’re short-circuiting the door, aren’t we?” There’s a grin on his face now.

“I wouldn’t be smiling like that if I were you. You still have to grab one of those wires.” Tony nods at the ones curling along the top of the door.

Peter hands the metal rod to Tony and leaps up onto the other wall. Tony props the rod against the wall.

“Grab the part that’s already tied in a loop, so you can just place it around the rod.”

“Got it.”

Peter grabs it, his body shudders and twitches, but he must stick to the wall because he doesn’t fall back this time. He moves down to the rod and places the coil of wires around it, then jumps backward.

There’s a sharp crackle of electricity, and then the low base-level buzz of the door dies completely. Peter grins up at Tony. His hair is sticking up a little bit, and there’s a manic glint in his eyes, but he doesn’t look gravely injured. Tony will take it.

“Nice work, kid.”

The grin turns into a beam.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Tony pulls the door open, running right into a metal suit. He grunts and takes a few steps back, shifting his eye-line up.

The War Machine suit stares back at him. Then the faceplate snaps up and Rhodey’s relieved face replaces the stoic expression of the mask.

“We’ve got to stop doing this,” he says. “The disappearing act was cute the first time, Tones. Tolerable the second. But now it’s just getting tired.”

Tony sniffs. “What took you so long? Why do I even ask? You're always a little late. Pete and I had it handled.”

“Oh, I know. I’m just your ride home.” He turns down the hallway. “The rest of the team already cleared the place.”

“Perfect,” Tony mumbles.

He still feels a little unsteady as he staggers down the hallway after Rhodey. Peter stays close to his side. At first it annoys him because he thinks the kid’s doing it just to check up on him. Then he notices that Peter’s jumping a little at every slight sound—even the creak of Rhodey’s armor. Maybe he's looking for comfort as much as he's trying to give it.

“Are you guys okay?” Rhodey’s tone is casual, but Tony’s been able to sense the worried undercurrent to his words for years now. It’s nice to know he cares.

Tony looks over at Peter. The kid’s already looking at him, eyebrows raised in a silent question. 

“Yeah,” Tony squeezes his shoulder. “We will be.”

**Author's Note:**

> One of my favorite tropes! I hope you enjoyed :)
> 
> Find me on [tumblr!](https://peterparkrr.tumblr.com)


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